I am your typical housewife living in high maintenance suburbia. I have a handsome husband, 2 kids and a flock of pet chickens. I try and feed my family with $100 a month. With the help of coupons, gardening and bartering I am able to squeeze the most out of our grocery budget and still manage to have a little fun along the way.

Can Newspaper Really Clean Glass?

Yep. It can. Simple as that! Newspaper actually does an amazing job cleaning windows and glass. It works. I’ve tried it and I’ll never use paper towels to clean a mirror or window again. So now that you know that it works {and I totally think you shouldn’t take my word for it, you should try it yourself because it just might amaze you!}, let me tell you the WHY behind it:

Newspapers are basically a bunch of dense fibers smushed together that contain no solid or scratchy materials. Plus, newspaper fibers are more rigid and won’t separate and cause lint residue like some paper towels do. And if you are worried about streaks, don’t be! About 90% of U.S. papers switched from petroleum-based ink to soy-based ink that won’t leave ink or smudges.

All I do is mix up a spray bottle of equal parts water and vinegar, spritz some onto the glass and wipe away using the newspaper. You are left with a perfectly clean, streak-free surface! boom. Store-bought cleaning products are really overrated!

Do you use newspaper to clean glass? If not, what products do you swear by?

I forgot to mention that I only use black and white newspaper. I don’t know why. Maybe I heard that the colored news pictures and ads don’t work as well. I wonder if that’s true. I never the the plastic-feeling ad pages either. Can those be used?

I use the Norwex brand window cloth. All I need is a light mist of water and then wipe down my mirrors/widows and they’re the cleanest I’ve ever seen! Prior to my Norwex cloth I did use vinegar/newspaper and it always worked well.

Yup – newspaper is great for cleaning! We get given newspapers from a friend – leftovers from newspaper delivery service. We have lots of uses for them, and windows is one of them.
Also simply ash, water and newspaper cleans the sooty glass of a wood burning heater extremely well!

I have always used newspaper and the vinegar/water to clean glass. The funny thing is that I learned it at my first job at Bonanza (you know, the steak house)…lol. In high school, I was the opener on weekends and one of the jobs was to clean the front windows. Always thought our boss was just cheap!

Newspaper is great, especially for outside. I had to put a teaspoon of dishwashing soap in my initial window cleaning solution of water and vinegar, to get the wax from commercial glass cleaning products off the windows and mirrors. Now it’s just vinegar and water for streak-free cleaning. It’s kind of smelly at first, but the smell rapidly dissipates.

I have an 8 oz spray bottle. I add about a tablespoon each of rubbing alcohol and white vinegar, then fill with water. I mist the glass then wipe it down with a chamois. Streak free, every time. If the window is really dirty (like the exterior) I’ll use a soapy rag first.

We have always done this – my parents did this growing up and we had LOTS of windows in our house!

Funny story: Spring cleaning at church one year where everyone volunteers to clean something and shows up with a variety of cleaning supplies. My mom showed up with a bucket, mop, vinegar, a rag, newspaper and baking soda. They literally didn’t know what do with her so they took her up on an offer to do the big windows on one side of the sanctuary (to the right of the altar). The next day at worship the right windows were nice and sparkly and clean, the left ones were streaky and smudged. My mom’s friend Marilyn came up to her the next Sunday and said she wasn’t able to stand it so she brought newspaper and vinegar with water and cleaned the other side after a meeting in the middle of the week. It was a buzz for YEARS since no one believed that my mom could really clean windows with vinegar-water and newspapers!